Communitarians are a group of political and social philosophers who argue that human identity, morals, and political values are fundamentally shaped by the communities to which individuals belong. Emerging primarily in the 1980s as an academic critique of modern liberalism—specifically John Rawls’s landmark 1971 book A Theory of Justice—communitarianism challenges the idea that individuals can be understood in isolation from their social and historical contexts.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/communitarianism – Britannica article.
Key Thinkers
While there is no single, unified communitarian manifesto (and many of these academics actively resist being grouped under one label), the philosophy’s theoretical foundation rests primarily on four figures:
- Michael Sandel: Argued against Rawls’s idea of a purely hypothetical “original position” for determining justice. Sandel asserted that moral obligations like solidarity, loyalty, and historic memory are deeply binding on us, even if they aren’t the result of freely chosen social contracts.
- Charles Taylor: Explored the “dialogical” nature of identity. He argued that humans only fully develop their capacities and define themselves through constant interaction with others, making the preservation of cultural communities a vital political concern.
- Alasdair MacIntyre: Revived Aristotelian virtue ethics in his book After Virtue. He argued that modern moral language is fractured and relativistic because it has been stripped of the traditions and community contexts that originally gave those morals meaning and weight.
- Michael Walzer: Focused on how justice is applied in practice. In Spheres of Justice, he argued that there are no universal, timeless principles of justice; rather, standards of justice must be drawn from the shared, contextual understandings of specific societies.
Responsive Communitarianism
In the 1990s, the concept evolved from a purely academic critique into a practical political movement led by sociologist Amitai Etzioni. Termed “responsive communitarianism,” this wave sought to strike a practical balance between individual rights and social responsibilities, arguing that hyper-individualism erodes the social capital necessary to sustain democracy.
This applied version of communitarianism became highly influential in the “Third Way” centrist politics of the late 1990s and 2000s. It shaped the rhetoric and policies of leaders like Bill Clinton in the US and Tony Blair in the UK by emphasizing civil society, family structures, and community obligations alongside personal freedoms.